"Are You Calling Me a Racist?": Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change

by Sarita Srivastava

Overview

Winner, 2025 Canadian Sociology Book Award, given by the Canadian Sociological Association

Shows why diversity workshops fail and offers concrete solutions for a path forward

Despite decades of anti-racism workshops and diversity policies in corporations, schools, and nonprofit organizations, racial conflict has only increased in recent years. “Are You Calling Me a Racist?” reveals why these efforts have failed to effectively challenge racism and offers a new way forward.

Drawing from her own experience as an educator and activist, as well as extensive interviews and analyses of contemporary events, Sarita Srivastava shows that racial encounters among well-meaning people are ironically hindered by the emotional investment they have in being seen as good people. Diversity workshops devote energy to defending, recuperating, educating, and inwardly reflecting, with limited results, and these exercises often make things worse. These “Feel-Good politics of race,” Srivastava explains, train our focus on the therapeutic and educational, rather than on concrete practices that could move us towards true racial equity. In this type of approach to diversity training, people are more concerned about being called a racist than they are about changing racist behavior.

“Are You Calling Me a Racist?” is a much-needed challenge to the status quo of diversity training, and will serve as a valuable resource for anyone dedicated to dismantling racism in their communities, educational institutions, public or private organizations, and social movements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781479815258
Publisher:	New York University Press
Publication date:	03/19/2024
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

Sarita Srivastava is Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science at OCAD University in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

"Srivastava writes from a first-person perspective as an activist, organizer, and educator on the front lines of the feminist and anti-racism movements. With perceptive insights and razor-sharp analysis, she reveals how 'progressive spaces filled with progressive people committed to fighting sexism and racism' are routinely 'confronted with familiar conflicts over racism, sexism, and diversity.'"

CHOICE

"Srivastava has written a deeply insightful book on the emotional features that all accusations of racism have come to generate. “Are You Calling Me a Racist?” offers a penetrating analysis of ‘the feel-good politics of race’ and introduces novel elements into critical analyses of race and racism, as necessary in taking up anti-racist activism as they are for research and teaching."

David Theo Goldberg

"This book is vital reading for anyone interested in understanding not only why feel-good race work has failed us but what we can do about it. Conversations, workshops, meetings, and therapy will never address the structural racism embedded in organizations. Relying on years of personal experience and work with leftist organizations and interviews with activists in feminist organizations, Sarita Srivastava skillfully deconstructs the performative nature of most contemporary diversity work."

author of Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

"A searing and compelling critique of the emotional cartography of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts and the ‘feel-good racial politics' normalized within anti-racism practices in community organizations, social media, universities, and workplaces. Srivastava offers a brilliant analysis of current DEI approaches that focus on individual experiences and attitudinal shifts rather than on concrete practices that transform the conditions that produce racial inequities. A must-read book for scholars and activists involved in meaningful, long-term anti-racist, decolonial social justice work."

Chandra Talpade Mohanty

"The book very clearly distills and, in an accessible style, explores all the things that are problematic with DEI training. Highly recommended for both public and academic libraries."

STARRED Booklist

"Sharing critical insights from anti-racist interventions in feminist organizations over the past three decades, Srivastava makes a compelling case that racism cannot simply be talked or trained away - and that attempts to do so often come at significant costs, contributing to rather than challenging harmful dynamics and practices. While some institutions, like the police, cannot be made ‘anti-racist’ because they were created to uphold structural relations of power, “Are You Calling Me a Racist?” offers signposts to a systemic approach to transformation focused on doing better rather than just feeling or knowing better."

author of Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Andrea J. Ritchie

2023-10-14
Diversity training often does more harm than good, according to this provocative study.

The past decade has seen the proliferation of antiracism workshops in corporations, government agencies, and universities. But Srivastava, a sociology professor at OCAD University in Toronto, argues that they’ve achieved very little in the fight against racist practices and policies. Instead, such programs usually become a sort of therapy for the participants, focused on “the Feel-Good politics of race.” Oddly, some of the worst offenders are progressive organizations, which, one might think, would be readily open to antiracist changes. The reason is that they’re so imbued with a sense of emotional and intellectual self-righteousness that they cannot believe they’re on the wrong side of a moral argument. In much of the book, the author explores the collision between antiracism and feminism, with its focus on consciousness raising and mutual caring. This mentality, writes Srivastava, “forestalls meaningful work to change systemic practices.” She provides plenty of interview material to support her case and points out that feminist theory often assumes that women are a homogenous group, which leads to negative consequences for women of color. Srivastava sets out a reform agenda, acknowledging that change will involve many small steps. “Focus on collective and concrete practice rather than inward sentiment,” she advises. In many places, the text reads more like an academic treatise than a program for action, with a mountain of footnotes and references. It’s not always clear where Srivastava is going with her argument, and many of the detours are distracting rather than informative. Some readers might also find some of her conclusions difficult, and some will be offended. Still, the author introduces an interesting topic worthy of further discussion.

Srivastava exposes the flaws of “feel-good” antiracist workshops, instead calling for practical actions and real reforms.

Kirkus Reviews